WdnUlik2no

A lease doenst work like a finance. A finance is a simple interest loan that you can pay off at anytime; send more in per month and your payments go down accordingly OR your term shortens. Leases are a contract and I don't think they work the same way, unless you pay FULL months in advance (not just a little more), its not worth it because I doubt if leasing companies even accept partial month payments. Plus don't quote me on this but I think once you pay a lease off early you may have to give the car back early too, sounds stupid I know, but leasing companies are very funny and I wouldn't put it past them. Better thing to do is if you want to prepay your lease, put that money into an interest bearing account and pay your lease from that account. you'll gain a little interest on your money and you still would have essentially paid it off, while gaining interest on the money you used.

As far as coverting your lease to a finance, yes its possible, but again probably not worth it. All that happens in this case is that your lease is bought by a loan company (sometimes the same company), and they turn around and finance the amount to you. But keep in mind that anytime a lease is bought, you are charged sales tax on the payoff amount. So if you lease payoff is say $20,000, you are charged your local sales tax rate on top of that, so with 6% tax your full payoff amount would be $21200. Plus there may be purchasing fees as well, again charged to you.

ac2001cls

Thanks WdnUlik2no for your reply. I guess my main concern is whether or not i'd be able to change the lease into an actual finance. That's my main concern. Since i was already thinking about keeping the car after my 3 year lease is up, not unless the TL gets the AWD and/or a model change. But that's even assuming that i like the new model when they do it. Again i leased to get my payments lowered so it would fit my budget a lil better. I think if i were going to finance, it would have been like $125-$140 more. But i was doing some thinking and it could be possible for me to handle that, being the way my job is and we get quarterly bonusus. So then i know that i would have to pay the sales tax on what i owe. But can someone confirm whether or not i would be charged any "purchasing fees" as he mentioned?

ac2001cls

Oh and i know you don't really hear about it much, but has anyone ever had a lease and opted to buy the car at the end? I know the norm is to trade it in on another new car when the lease is up.

WdnUlik2no

I doubt it with the new school leases, like the one you probably have now.

But with the old school leases you actually HAD to buy it at the end, (ie. ballon payment).

ac2001cls

WOW... that's interesting! So i guess it's all good. I guess i'm just trying to go with what actually would be save me the money! But according to what one of the guys here posted (the long thread where he explained everything to a "t") he mentioned that it pretty much evens out and it's not that big of a difference.